HT Magazine published: “Starwood Hotels & Resorts Worldwide was selected as an Enterprise Innovator for its development of a global standard for a hotel-based electronic procure to payment system. The endeavor was undertaken in order to enable consistent and efficient spend visibility, financial controls, accounts payable automation, information technology support, supplier tracking, and overall hotel operations. This entailed consolidating information from more than 12 different systems globally into one cloud-based system. Just one year into the anticipated three years it will take for full deployment, the company is already forecasting metrics of productivity gains between 10% and 30%, a 25% reduction in cycle time and 30+% invoice process efficiencies.”

“Starwood Hotels & Resorts is honored to be recognized by Hospitality Technology for its successful efforts and achievements in creating and implementing a global standard for a hotel-based electronic procurement to pay system. By leveraging the collective strength of the Starwood System — linking finance, procurement, operations and business intelligence — Starwood’s Procure 2 Pay Solution enables our hotels to run robust reports to enable better and faster decision making.”

“In searching for the best, seamless, integrated cloud procure-to-pay solution, BirchStreet met every criteria we had, and more. On top of that, the price was right. Now, after years of working on their platform, we have exceeded our goals and have a system that provides tremendous visibility into our purchasing business processes and spend.

“With BirchStreet, we now have a comprehensive view of all spend from a corporate level and at a property level. We have achieved remarkable transparency and visibility into nearly every item and service purchased at every location. Our spend management performance is now easy to track, report and analyze to make continuous operational improvements.”

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Jim KuthyVP of Procurement and Capital FinanceOmni Hotels

“The implementation of BirchStreet in our properties around the globe has created improvements in our control procedures, supplier management, spend analytics, shared services activities and, not to be underestimated in terms of its impact, a heightened awareness amongst all users of the impact of their procurement activities, helping to drive improved practices at all levels of procurement. ”

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Four Seasons Hotels and Resorts

“It’s so easy to just look at the Project screen. I don’t have to keep multiple budgets in multiple spreadsheets anymore. The entire project is automated and in one central place. The amount of time saved is mind boggling.

The BirchStreet platform is great! I’m happy with it and would select the products again if I had the chance.”

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Matt O’Maley Director of PurchasingThe Peninsula Chicago

Marriott International awarded BirchStreet “2013 Technology Partner of the Year.”

Some operators are pushing to make this more efficient. Marriott is working to integrate its BirchStreet procurement and recipe management solutions across North America. “In addition to easy organization-wide access to nutrition data, the BirchStreet technology links with vendors, so if I’m doing a crab cake dinner, I automatically know the price of crab,” says John Huppman, senior manager, culinary operators, global recipe database administration for Marriott International. He is also able to use the system to see opportunities for savings. “It provides a better picture of financial position day to day, so decisions can be made to shore up spending,” he adds.

“I like the reporting for both accounting as well as purchasing. The Daily Receiving Report allows us to view the daily food costs, beverage cost and manage orders more efficiently. The bottom line is that we are more efficient with our internal controls because of the BirchStreet system.”

“We immediately saw that the soft savings – time and efficiency – involved with using BirchStreet have met and exceeded our expectations. We are anticipating getting hard cost savings within the next month. Our operations and business processes have significantly improved by using the BirchStreet platform.”

“We have more visibility and accountability with increased financial progress by using BirchStreet. BirchStreet Recipe Management System has automated the way we do business, saving us time, reducing expenses and enhancing the quality and consistency of our culinary program.”

“I started my search looking for a solution for our smaller hotels, to be able to process invoices remotely and reduce or eliminate the keypunching and mailing of invoices. I talked to several companies and asked for hotel references, and the response back was “our product will work for any business” which I did not believe. After my first 5 minutes with BirchStreet I said, ‘Wow, you are a hotel guy!’

The two other features that was important were Purchase Orders and Checkbooks. BirchStreet delivered both of those and more. The POs are created automatically from many of our existing suppliers (from their website or catalogues). The Checkbook is updated from either POs or invoices, and the Checkbook forecast is automatically updated from our GL system.The electronic approval with email alerts eliminated the ‘walk and wait’ manual approval system for our previous paper POs, and reduced the ‘after the fact’ POs. Using a scanning company also created a paperless environment. Many invoices go directly from BirchStreet to our Accounts Payable system after the auto-matching of the PO to the invoice, and Accounts Payable never touches the transaction.

BirchStreet ended up being a terrific solution for not only our smaller hotels, but our larger hotels too.”

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Kirk Poe, VP TransitionsDestinations Hotels & Resorts

“We needed to meet brand requirements and wanted to capitalize on our buying programs and rebates. BirchStreet showed us that their procure-to-pay system had flexibility, scalability and more functionality than competing systems.”

“BirchStreet fit the requirements and understood what we wanted. Using BirchStreet, we now have flexibility and agility to operate better and faster. The BirchStreet team is great and the tool is helping us be more agile.”

“BirchStreet saved us time and money, but using the system has also made us money.”

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Anita Shaffer, Global Nutrition Program ManagerCampbell Soup Company

“AccuBar is highly favored by our operators at Royal Palm Yacht and Country Club because of its business adaptability while maintaining needed controls. And with BirchStreet being our main system for procurement as well, I think this is a brilliant acquisition that helps both vendors and customers. This is a win-win for RPYCC as an operator utilizing both systems in standardizing its business efficiencies.”

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Jamison MaoRoyal Palm Yacht & Country Club

“Using BirchStreet and AccuBar, the Balboa Bay Club processes have gained efficiencies that have impacted our bottom line. Now that they are coming together, it will be even easier to take advantage of their benefits. As the market leader, we recommend other hotels and restaurants to take a look.”

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Danette Perrotta, Director of FinanceBalboa Bay Club

“When I joined HHM last year, we had already bought, paid for and implemented another system, but we decided to shut it down. We knew that BirchStreet had experience and proven leadership and provided the right functionality, so it was worth the change. In addition, I knew they could integrate into our ERP system, valued security and were cloud based, so we could access one centralized system from Corporate or at each property. Most importantly, the functionality was there for our business needs and processes.”

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Joseph Klam, Executive VP of Financial ServicesHHM

“With BirchStreet, we now have visibility into buying the right item at the right price from the right supplier. This will improve compliance for both our Buyers as well as Suppliers. That being said, we have begun to see a shift of purchasing habits by limiting exposure to the right suppliers and items, and being able to flag those items. That change gives us an additional savings of about 15% off all the items that are now being purchased on-contract, versus paying street price. With simply looking at our planned savings for eProcurement and buying more through our Avendra programs, we will achieve ROI in 6 to 9 months, which will impact our bottom line by 2.5%. As noted before, this will increase over time as we ramp up both compliance, efficiency and AP savings.”

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Bobbie Carey, Director of Purchasing SystemsHHM

“Best Western is thrilled to partner with BirchStreet Systems to advance our procurement process. We continue to look for new ways to enhance support for our members, and I’m confident this platform’s simplified and streamlined approach will be of great value.”

“One of the biggest benefits was that BirchStreet was a cloud-based system, customizable and made our operation process easy. No licenses were needed. In addition, we wanted the students to use the system as an educational tool.”

“With BirchStreet, I have finally found the perfect inventory management solution for the Club. The new acquisition with AccuBar can only make an already great offering better!”

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Marvin JonesGeneral ManagerSan Antonio Country Club

“I knew from being in the industry that there was a lot of good word of mouth about BirchStreet and it created better efficiency and streamlined processes.”

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William BradyPurchasing Manager Commerce Casino

“While at Fairmont Hotels & Resorts, I was the hotel ‘champion’ and installation lead for BirchStreet. We went from a paper based Requisition and Purchase Order system to a completely automated BirchStreet managed system. The differences were amazing, BirchStreet offers the ability to build clean workflows and approvals. We also gained clear visibility into all past orders and account balances. In hospitality, it can be sometimes difficult to obtain time sensitive approvals for food & beverage orders, and an administrator is needed to re-route orders, which is a necessary audit requirement, but sometimes hard to manage. We had a very good set of trainers for the initial set-up”